Reap the Whirlwind
by ZephyrHawk
Summary: Sequel to 'Tame the Whirlwind". Vash leaves again and life must go on. This is the short one of the series.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: This is an unauthorized derivative work infringing upon the characters and overall feel of the TV series Trigun. Go ahead, sue me. I'm $60,000+ in student loan debt, you're not going to squeeze a cent out of me.  
  
Rating: PG  
  
Note from the author: This is the sequel to 'Tame the Whirlwind'. If you haven't read that you can probably get through this fanfiction without too much trouble, however, I would still suggest starting at the very beginning (a very good place to start). The sequel to this story is 'Inherit the Wind' which is still in the production phase. For those still waiting for the final chapter of the first fanfiction I apologize. If you think you're anxious, think how bad poor Vash feels waiting for two weeks with Meryl's shirt only half off. Alas, sex scenes are not something I feel comfortable writing in the middle of ethics classes.  
  
Inspiration Soundtrack: Lightning Crashes  
  
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----------------------------------------  
  
But on the twenty-fifth of May, at sunset, a violent wind howled madly,  
  
Battering and rending my plants;  
  
Rain poured down, Pounding the vines and flowers into the earth.  
  
It was so painful  
  
But as the work of the wind, I have to let it be ...  
  
- Ryokan  
  
Reap the Whirlwind  
  
He stayed for three months.  
  
Three months didn't seem like quite enough comfort to her for 10 years of lonely waiting, but it would have to do. She couldn't really even act surprised when he told her, she had always known he would leave someday. He had . obligations. For whatever reason, he felt that he was responsible for every single soul on the planet. That it was his job to protect them from themselves. And maybe he was right. Whatever the case, it would have taken a harder and colder person than her to stop him. Somehow she knew, he needed to help people. As much as it was an assignment, it was also his passion, his gift.  
  
His love.  
  
She could never deny him anything. It would never even have crossed her mind to beg him to stay. Instead she stared at him over the stack of pancakes he placed in front of her with what she hoped were calm eyes and asked him the only question that meant anything.  
  
"Will you come back?"  
  
He nodded, his face all seriousness. A silent promise. A man of his word. He stared at her with piercing blue-green eyes, as if wondering whether she would question him further. But she was too wise to him for that. She wouldn't let on how much his announcement had hurt her by asking more than the basics. Where he went wasn't important. Not why, either, she doubted he really understood himself. She didn't even query him as to when he thought he might return. A week, a year, another decade of waiting, it didn't matter. He would come back to her, he had said so. Instead she slid her knife through the several fluffy layers of pancake goodness before her, popped a tasty hunk into her mouth, and forced a smile at him around the fork.  
  
It did cross her mind for a moment that she could follow him, but she had shaken that idea out of her head almost as quickly as it had appeared. First, he wouldn't have wanted her to go. His job just would have been harder with her always in the way. And of course he'd always be worrying about her. It had been bad enough when they were just friends, traveling companions. How much worse would things be now? She would be a target for every bounty hunter and bad guy in the territories trying to get a hand on Vash the Stampede. She would be a hindrance to him, someone he was not willing to risk any danger to, and she would hold him back. But that was not the only reason. She needed to be here, for his sake. He needed to know that, somewhere, there was a home for him to return to. To know that someone was waiting for him. A thought to keep him warm on cold evenings sleeping in the desert. A happy memory of love for when everyone else seemed an enemy.  
  
He needed her to be his rock, and she was willing.  
  
And so they finished breakfast and she went to work as always and that night they made love with the windows open to the hot breeze of midsummer. It smelled faintly spicy, like it always had in her dreams of the territories, and his tears had tasted of salt when she kissed his closed eyelids. They left the apartment together the next morning, him heading off down the street in the opposite direction. She couldn't help herself, she turned to watch him go. The sight of his lanky outline walking away from her seemed somehow achingly familiar. She didn't cry, but at the office her co-workers could see her eyes were puffy and red, and left her alone.  
  
It was sometime two weeks later that she started getting sick.  
  
At first she thought it was something that she'd eaten. Bad eggs, bad meat. She thought about contacting the grocery store and reporting her symptoms. In the end, she figured it was just her and left well enough alone.  
  
The next day she was sick again.  
  
'Stomach flu?,' she wondered, raising a hand to her head to check for temperature. It didn't make sense, she felt fine aside from the throwing up. A little depressed maybe, but that was understandable. She thought she would have heard if something was going around. 'Stress?' Yes, that could be it. Since Vash had left she'd been working herself to the bone. Putting in extra hours and foregoing time with friends in an effort to forget the huge gaping hole in her soul. Some time off was in order. She called in to work and spent the day with Millie and the kids at the park.  
  
Laying on a picnic table, arms crossed behind her head for a pillow, she watched the two young children run screaming and laughing in a game of their own devising. She smiled for the first time in a week. Millie sat at her feet knitting.  
  
"I can't believe you're knitting, Millie," she teased, "I seem to remember you wielding a stun gun not too long ago." Millie paused in her work and smiled up at the kids gamboling before her.  
  
"Things change when you're a mother," she said in all seriousness. Meryl looked at her quizzically, Millie was very rarely serious. "You make sacrifices, you learn to accept things you wouldn't have before." She turned away from her children to gaze at her old friend. Her face oozing a sort of sad honesty she continued, "You grow up."  
  
Meryl thought she was quite grown up enough, thank you. And Millie? Meryl smiled and shook her head before leaning back again upon her arms. Millie had never grown up, whatever she said. Meryl watched clouds race across the hazy blue of the sky. A hot wind blew hair damp with midday sweat from her brow. One of the kids screeched as the play got a little too rough. Millie stood with comforting words and moved to break up the altercation. Meryl's eyes drifted closed. Yes, this day had been exactly what she needed.  
  
That evening she was able to get to sleep almost right away. She had even managed to skip her now nightly ritual of staring out her window until the early hours of the dawn. Staring at the spot down the street where she had last been able to distinguish his retreating form. Staring and hoping that, just maybe, he'd come. That maybe he'd find two weeks to be too long without her. That maybe he was hurting as much as she. That she meant as much to him as he to her. Instead she finished the book she'd been trying to read forever and wrote in her journal. She curled up on top of her blankets, it was too hot to do otherwise, and drifted off to dreams that, for once, didn't involve him. She dreamt of the kids and the park. Of screaming laughter and childish tears. She dreamt of bouncing balls and swings and jump ropes. And smiling blue-green eyes.  
  
In the morning she was sick again.  
  
She was better by the time she dragged herself into work ten minutes late, but she must have looked awful because the boss didn't even chew her out. She was beginning to get concerned. She had very rarely been sick in her life and didn't really know how to deal with it. Wounds she could handle. Bandages and antiseptic, those were concrete things that she could understand. Disease you couldn't see, couldn't feel, and generally just had to let run its course without any really effective treatment. She mentioned it to Millie that afternoon when she stopped off to return the book.  
  
The kids were squabbling over a game of checkers in the living room. Millie was preparing dinner, chopping onions and trying hard not to cry. Meryl leaned comfortably against the kitchen counter munching on a fresh baked cookie. That's why she didn't fall over at what Millie said in a sniffling reply.  
  
"Maybe you're pregnant?"  
  
Chop.  
  
Meryl coughed out little bits of cookie. Eyes staring wide and frightened at her friend through dark bangs. "What?!?" she almost shouted.  
  
"Well (chop) it's just that it sounds like morning sickness to me (chop)."  
  
Meryl was in shock. "How?. . .I mean. . . I can't. . .I mean. . ." She trailed off not knowing what she meant.  
  
"Well," said Millie in that simple, cheerful, no nonsense way of hers (chop), "It's pretty clear that you and Mr. Vash were-"  
  
"Millie!" Meryl shrieked in an aghast whisper. She glanced towards the doorway that lead to the living room. The kids were still playing loudly. She sighed shortly in relief, they hadn't heard anything and probably wouldn't understand if they had.  
  
"Come on Meryl, what's to hide (chop)," Millie said teasingly, "Everybody knows." Meryl colored furiously at the idea that her sexual exploits were common knowledge. "Anyways," Millie continued with her lecture, "that's how it works (chop). When a man and a woman love each other they-"  
  
"I know how it works, Millie," she replied darkly. Meryl was beginning to get annoyed with her friend. Suddenly her legs didn't feel quite strong enough to hold up even her slight weight, she collapsed into a chair at the small kitchen table. Arms hanging lifeless at her sides and eyes still wide with shock, she tried to remember when had been her last "time of the month". She hadn't really been keeping track lately, she'd been too concerned with Vash's departure. Too busy wallowing in her own self pity. 'Oh God,' she thought, raising a trembling hand to her face. It was possible.  
  
In a voice that sounded like that of a scared young girl and not her own, she went on, "I never.I haven't been paying attention. . .it didn't even occur to me . . ." She was stuttering like an idiot. 'He's not even my species,' she thought desperately.  
  
Chop.  
  
Millie turned to her, eyes full of concern and understanding and everything that made up the strong-willed Millie that had come out in their travels whenever Meryl had felt too weak or scared to go on. "That's how it happens sometimes." She had dropped the lecturing tone and her eyes had gone soft, remembering. "That's how Nicky came about, you know. I never intended to have another so soon after little Meryl."  
  
Elbows leaning on the table and hands held before her eyes, Meryl stared at her friend through spread fingers. Millie's knowledge, Millie's understanding, Millie's pity. These hurt her more than the pinch of her own naive stupidity.  
  
Closing her eyes and letting her head hang between her hands, Meryl shut out the suddenly incomprehensible world. A world where her cheerful, ditzy friend turned out to be the smarter and stronger of the two of them. A world where men left those they loved in order to save the souls of those who didn't give a damn about them or anyone else. For a moment, she wasn't sure she wanted to live in that world, let alone bring more life into it.  
  
"You're right, Millie," she said after what seemed like forever, her voice muffled by the thick dark hair hanging about her face. She raised her head to gaze, shaking, at her friend. "Maybe. . . maybe I should go see a doctor. 


	2. Chapter 2

"Well the test came back positive," the doctor said as he breezed back into the room. "Congratulations."  
  
Meryl sat uncomfortably on the edge of the examining table. She was wearing one of those flimsy one-use only hospital gowns, and after twenty minutes of waiting with every wind in the hospital finding a way to blow up her back she was beginning to get annoyed. 'How is it,' she had thought, 'That on this boiling hellhole of a planet the only cool place is the one where they make you sit half naked on a freezing cold metal table.' All thoughts, however, had flown out of her head with the doctor's somewhat abrupt entrance. He hadn't even looked up at her as he entered. Instead he kept his eyes on the chart before him and flipped it over to the next page as he sank without looking into the room's one low chair.  
  
"Oh?" she replied. Her voice sounded foreign to her. It seemed to come from someplace far away and even she couldn't tell if it sounded happy or sad or scared.  
  
"Mmmhmmm," he hummed in answer. He removed a red colored pen from his front shirt pocket and tapped it against the chart. "So. . .," he looked up at her for the first time, "When should I set your next appointment."  
  
"What?" Meryl replied. Everything seemed to be happening so fast. The doctor was staring at her, his eyes huge behind the thick lenses of his glasses. For a moment they caught the light from the window and seemed to flash golden. Meryl caught her breath. The image disappeared almost immediately.  
  
"Your next appointment, Miss Stryfe," the doctor said, enunciating every word and speaking slowly as if talking to a very young child. Meryl just blinked. "Your sonogram," he drawled and made little circles in the air with his pen, as if that would make what he was saying any more clear.  
  
"Oh," she replied. It was all she could think to say. The appointment was set and Meryl got back into her street clothes. She left the clinic and went to Millie's.  
  
"Meryl that's wonderful!" Millie had enthused as her husband gave his more stoic congratulations. The two kids had fairly bounced with excitement upon hearing her announcement.  
  
"Mommy, mommy," said her little namesake, "Is Aunt Meryl really going to have a baby?"  
  
Millie had assured her that she was and told her that someday soon they'd have a new little cousin to play with. "Oh Meryl," she had said, turning to her friend with tears of happiness twinkling in her eyes, "Now our children will grow up together." Her husband offered up a chair and a cup of tea. Meryl declined both. She hadn't known where else to go, but now that she was here she wanted nothing more than to leave. Seeing Millie with her loving husband and her beautiful, happy, normal family, she suddenly couldn't take it. Pleading duties at home she backed out of the kitchen and almost ran down the hall to the door. She didn't turn around, knowing that if she did so she would see Millie's hurt face staring back at her. Halfway to her apartment she slowed her pace and leaned against a bakery's whitewashed façade. Rolling her head back against the brick she looked up into the cloudless sky.  
  
There were options, of course. They weren't talked about in polite society, but it was known all the same. There were . . . places. Places where foolish young unmarried girls could go to take care of problems like hers. It was supposed to be painful. It was supposed to be dangerous. It was only supposed to be for the desperate.  
  
No.  
  
Meryl's hand slid instinctively down over her smooth flat belly. No, had it been anyone else's child she might have considered it. But not this one.  
  
Not Vash's child.  
  
No. She could be his rock and she could bear his child too. She would bear his child. Their child. Slowly a smile crept over her face. The setting suns beat down on her black hair. They gleamed orange off of the white walls behind her. The store front was warm against her back. Not the oppressive wet heat she'd been suffering through the last two weeks, but a comforting dry warmth. Sighing the cares of the day from her body, Meryl thrust herself off of the wall and walked home; eyes stinging with effort, but tearless.  
  
When she got there she dragged out her old travel typewriter. Patiently, agonizing over every sentence, she slowly tapped out two letters. The first was to Vash. In it she told him how much she missed him, about how hard it had been getting used to not having him around anymore. She told him about the child. She began by gushing out the joy and excitement she hadn't been able to express to Millie. Then the letter degraded into a recitation of her fears. How would she support the both of them? What would her parents' think? What if something happened to her during the birth? The letter ended with a pitiful plea for his return. Meryl stared at the paper before her, angry tears filling her eyes. She ripped it from the machine, crumpled it into a ball, and tossed it into the waste container. Meryl Stryfe did NOT plead. Sighing she replaced it with a pristine new sheet of paper. It's not like she had an address to send it to, anyways.  
  
The second letter was to her parents. Glossing over her regular pleasantries, she got right to the point. She was pregnant. She was unmarried. And, seeing as how the father had just wandered off into the sunset bent on saving all the inhabitants of Gunsmoke, it was unlikely she would be getting married any time in the near future. She signed it in her own precise script, addressed the envelope, and licked it closed.  
  
'There,' she thought, 'Now the worst is over.'  
  
She broke into sudden uncontrollable sobs. She had never lied so poorly to anyone as she had to herself just then. When night fell she crawled into bed and pulled a single thin sheet up over her head. Crying herself softly to sleep she forced herself not to say his name, afraid for some reason, that he might hear. In the morning her pillow was still wet. 


	3. Chapter 3

The reply to her letter came a week later. It was so thin that at first she wondered if there were anything in it at all. She opened it and a single thin piece of paper fell out onto her carpeting. It was a check, for enough double dollars to last her for some time. No letter, but the message was clear. 'Take the money, do not contact us again.' Meryl kneeled next to the fallen paper in the middle of her apartment. Caressing her now slightly rounding stomach she grit her teeth. 'I'll just have to make my own family now.'  
  
Her sonogram was scheduled for the next day. Millie went with her to the doctor's. She hadn't been angry at Meryl for running out of the house. When Meryl mentioned it she only shrugged her shoulders and tossed her head as if it were nothing. Then she had patted Meryl on the head and told her how frightened she had been having her first child and that she understood.  
  
'Yeah,' thought Meryl, 'But at least you weren't alone.'  
  
Soon Meryl found herself on yet another uncomfortable table. This time laying flat on her back as the technician rubbed some shockingly cold substance over her stomach. Millie smiled at her warmly and held her trembling hand.  
  
"Hmmmm.." said the technician considering, "How far along did you say you were?"  
  
"Ummm.." Meryl stalled, embarrassed, "Actually, I'm not completely sure. Maybe a month, a month and a half." The technician nodded without even turning his eyes from the tiny black and white screen before him.  
  
"You look a little big for that," he mumbled, then brightening, "Ah, I see, that's why."  
  
"What?!" Meryl cried suddenly fearful. There had been no fear in the technicians voice, no concern, but anything out of the ordinary couldn't be good. Could it?  
  
The young man sitting at her side bathed her in his shining greens eyes and favored her with a wry half smile. "Look's like you're carrying an extra passenger." Turning the small monitor towards the two breathless women, he moved away so that they could get a better look. "Twins," he explained with a wave of his hand.  
  
Meryl blinked. All she could see was some random black and grey splotches that could have been almost anything. Millie cooed in excitement, but Meryl thought she probably couldn't make anything out either. Turning to the technician with an incredulous look she asked, "Seriously?"  
  
"Yep," he replied turning back to his work. "See this here?" He pointed to a portion of the screen with his finger. "That's one head, and this here. . ." He pointed to yet another splotchy area of the screen. "That's another." Meryl blinked, she still didn't see it. Millie just gave her a blank, but encouraging, smile. The technician was already mumbling to himself again and writing furiously upon a medical chart.  
  
"Okay," Meryl said. She dropped her head into suddenly ice cold hands. What was with these hospitals and the temperature anyways? And what the heck was she going to do now.  
  
"Oh Meryl," Millie squeaked ecstatically, "This is so exciting. Didn't you once say Mr. Vash was a twin?"  
  
Meryl raised her head thoughtfully. "Yeah," she asserted, "Yeah, he was." Weird. She had heard that that type of thing could be genetic. It made her wonder, not for the first time, what other odd traits her child (correction, children) would inherit from their father. At that point she realized that the technician was trying to get her attention.  
  
"I'm sorry, what did you say?"  
  
"I said would you like to know the sexes?"  
  
"Uuhh..." Did she? "Sure, why not."  
  
"A boy and a girl," he replied matter-of-factly. "One of each, good way to do it."  
  
"Yeah, I guess so." Meryl's head was reeling. She was beginning to feel giddy for no good reason. This was just too much to take in at one time. Twins. One of each. Not Vash's child, Vash's children. 'Crap,' she thought as she fell back against the table top, 'I wonder if my parents would want to know.' She sighed. 'Probably not.' She hadn't told Millie about the reply she'd received the day before. It would only make her angry and it wouldn't help anything.  
  
The technician was cleaning up his equipment. After switching off the monitor he turned again to the two girls. "Oh, by the way, there's one other thing." They looked at him questioningly. "Those kids are still too big for a month and a half. Two months at least, probably closer on to three."  
  
"Oh," said Meryl, experiencing a sinking feeling deep in her stomach.  
  
"Just something to keep in mind for your next visit." He left and the door swung shut behind him. Meryl sat in silence considering his last comment. It had made her think of something, but she couldn't quite put her finger on what. It was like the pricking sensation you get on the back of your neck when you just know someone else is in the room with you, but you can't tell where.  
  
"Come on Meryl," Millie said cheerfully. "Let's get you back into your clothes and out of this place." She brought white hands up to her lips and blew on them. "Gosh, it's absolutely freezing in here."  
  
It was days before Meryl realized what had been bothering her. It was something Vash had said. He was always talking about that woman, Rem, and all the things he'd learned from her. Chess and computers and the language of flowers. But when once she had questioned him further he said he'd only spent a year on the ship before its crash.  
  
Only a year to learn so much. To grow so much. Squeezing her eyes shut, Meryl spread both hands protectively over the fragile life within her and prayed for strength. 


	4. Chapter 4

It was a little less than four months later that Meryl went into labor.  
  
The doctors had been continually confused, and highly apologetic, about the discrepancies in her charts. It had been suggested that several technicians were in for a strict talking to. She sincerely hoped that no one lost their jobs over it. The last to examine her had shaken his head in confusion and pronounced her at eight months. Still, she went every day to work at the insurance agency. Who knew when next she'd be gainfully employed? The people at work had been understanding, solicitous almost, of her condition. Meryl knew that they whispered behind her back, but that was nothing new. The strange woman who had once chased down Vash the Stampede was something of a legend around the company as it was. Her boss had kindly lightened her load and promised her the same position whenever she decided she could come back. Still it was difficult. Just walking up the four flights of stairs to the office was tiring enough. Fitting comfortably under her desk had become a problem as well. Eventually she just pulled her typewriter off of it and did her work with the machine perched precariously on her knees.  
  
She had just replaced the typewriter on her desk and stood up, knuckling her lower back, to get coffee. Waddling (she hated to admit it, but that is what it looked like) over to the communal pot, she froze in place in the middle of the floor. She was in front of one of the secretaries' desks when she paused and the woman seated there looked up quizzically. Leaning one hand upon the random secretary's desk, Meryl pressed a hand to her side.  
  
"Excuse me, Miss Stryfe, but is everything all right." Meryl looked over at the young woman. Not much more than a girl. Blue eyes blinked over thin rimmed glasses. Her golden blonde hair was pulled back into a low ponytail. It was a look carefully concocted to make her look older, more professional. Meryl wondered for a moment what this pretty young woman would have done if it had been her sent out into the wilds to hunt down the prince of outlaws. Would she have even lasted through to discovering the infamous gunman? Would she have gone chasing after him even after he ordered her away? Would she have stepped in front of a gun to save his scrawny hide? Would this lovely little princess playing dress up at a real honest to goodness job have fallen hopelessly in love with the worst person possibly imaginable?  
  
It was a stupid question. Of course not. She wasn't her.  
  
"I'm fine," Meryl replied finally. The secretary blinked and looked confused. "But I think I'm going to need a taxi."  
  
It could not have taken more than thirty minutes to get to the hospital, but to Meryl it felt like forever. She was herded into a bright room with a decidedly uncomfortable looking bed. For a change she noticed it was warm in the room, perspiration was already beading up on the back of her neck. A sweet faced nurse took one embarrassingly frank look at Meryl and cheerily declared her to be "progressing rapidly."  
  
"That's lucky," she said smiling, "It's rare for first time mothers."  
  
'Right,' Meryl had thought to herself. 'Lucky.'  
  
By the time Millie showed up shortly thereafter things were really beginning to heat up. She rushed into the room ignoring the protestations of the nurse outside the door.  
  
"Meryl!" she nearly shouted in excitement. "I'm sorry, I had to find someone to watch the kids while I'm gone. Am I on time."  
  
"You haven't missed anything yet, Millie," Meryl replied through clenched teeth.  
  
"Ooooh," Millie gasped. "Does it hurt so much?" Meryl just glared in reply. "Oh," Millie said, chiding herself, "Of course it does." She went on in a seemingly worried fashion. "And Mr. Vash is such a big man and you're so little that-"  
  
"Millie!" Meryl barked, "You're not helping."  
  
"Right," said Millie, suddenly seeming to come to herself. She rushed to the chair by Meryl's bedside and clasped her friend's hand. Squeezing it gently she beamed at Meryl. "I know it's bad now, but when it's all over," she leaned forward and whispered confidentially, eyes a shining blue, "It's all worth it."  
  
"I hope so, Millie," Meryl sighed, leaning back against the pillows piled behind her. "I hope so."  
  
Soon doctors and nurses were running frantically in and out of the room every few moments. Things were definitely progressing quickly. Meryl clenched her eyes shut and grimaced as another pain swept over her.  
  
"Ummm..Meryl,?" Millie's voice was strained. "Could you maybe not squeeze so hard?" Meryl gasped a breath and her eyes flew open. Turning to her friend she released the pressure in her hand a little.  
  
"Millie," she said breathlessly, pushing herself up with difficulty onto her elbows, "I have to ask you, if I don't make it through this-"  
  
"What a silly thing to say, Meryl, you're going to be just-"  
  
"Millie I'm serious!" Millie quieted upon seeing the desperate look in her friend's eyes. Sweat was beginning to bead up on her face and mix with the hot tears that coursed tracks over her cheeks. Millie nodded and listened to what her friend had to say. "If something happens to me. . . will you. . ." Meryl gave her a pleading look.  
  
"I'd take care of them like they were my own," Millie assured her, "Is that what you wanted to hear?" Meryl nodded wearily and fell back upon the pillows. She had only a moment of respite though, as soon enough she was bent over in pain and squeezing Millie's hand just as hard as before.  
  
"It's okay Meryl," said Millie, trying to smile through her own pain. "You can scream if you want to."  
  
"No!" Meryl answered emphatically.  
  
Setting her chin at a haughty angle, she reminded herself of who she was. Oh, sure, she had screamed before. She had screamed in fear. She had screamed in anger. In frustration. But she would not scream because of pain. Pain was illusory. It could be lived through, fought through. Vash was proof of that. No, only once had she ever cried out because of pain. She had been scared. She had been weak. She had screamed and Vash had killed someone. No, she had sworn to herself that she would never do that again. Ever. Besides, it couldn't get much worse, could it?  
  
It very quickly got worse.  
  
"Come on Meryl," Millie cried encouragingly over her own tears, "You can do it."  
  
Meryl was being ripped apart. She could feel her flesh tearing, could feel herself tearing her own flesh apart with her pushing. Nothing she had ever yet experienced, nothing from her years wandering in the desert, nothing from the years before or after when she had suffered from a loneliness so total that it was torture, nothing had ever hurt this much. She thought desperately of Vash. She thought of the deep scars crisscrossing his chest. She thought of his arm, ripped bodily from him by his own brother. She thought about digging a bullet out of his shoulder with a glowing hot knife while he lay sprawled unconscious on the bed before her; Millie watching, terrified, from the corner of the room. She thought of the night he had awakened after killing Legato, when she had been too afraid, too confused about her own feelings, to comfort him. She had hid behind the door as he sobbed out his agony. She had cringed in sanctuary on the other side of the wall and listened to him screaming in self hatred.  
  
Writhing uncontrollably, half mad with pain, she did what she should have done then.  
  
"VASH!" she shrieked.  
  
Her outburst was followed by a sudden glorious silence, and then a sharp, insistent cry filled the room.  
  
"It's a boy!" cried the doctor as the same sweet faced nurse from earlier rushed forward to take the pink wriggling thing from him with a towel.  
  
"Oh, Meryl," Millie said sniffling and blinking away tears as she brushed wet locks from her friends forehead, "He's just beautiful!"  
  
Glazed, cloudy grey eyes fluttered open.  
  
"Millie," she croaked, barely above a whisper, "He heard me. Somehow he heard."  
  
"Umm . sure Meryl . . . whatever." Millie gazed concernedly at her friend. Meryl usually wasn't one for talking nonsense like this. "Look," she pointed, "You have a son."  
  
Meryl's eyes tracked slowly along Millie's finger to where she was pointing. Blinking, her expression became somewhat clearer. "One more," she stated tiredly.  
  
"Yeah, you've got it," Millie encouraged, "Half done now." Meryl closed her eyes as another contraction began.  
  
The second twin came out much easier. Meryl managed to stay conscious long enough to mumble out their names before collapsing in exhaustion. Millie stayed by her side as she slept, curled up around her pillow and whimpering. The nurse left the children under Millie's care until their mother woke up.  
  
Staring at the two babies laying side by side in their crib, Millie could already see differences between them. The girl baby's head was covered in soft fuzz the same dark, almost blue-black color as her mother's tresses. The boy was definitely going to be blonde. Both blinked up at her with the near luminescent aquamarine eyes of their father. There were other differences too. The boy was fussier, he had screamed bloody murder after coming out. The girl, however, had been almost silent. Millie smiled down at them, wishing Meryl was awake to see how seriously they looked back at her.  
  
'Funny,' she thought, 'It's almost as if they're studying me.' She glanced back over at their mother. Her flimsy hospital gown was plastered to her back with sweat. Thick creases marred her brow even in slumber. Black eyelashes lay stark against cheeks gone ghost white from loss of blood. Millie rubbed her own hand where Meryl had dug her nails in and drawn blood. Sighing, she turned back to her tiny charges, and placed one hand gently upon both of their velvety heads.  
  
"I'll tell you this little Vash and little Millie," she smiled at the names, "Your mother is one very special person." Millie blinked. She could swear they were both smiling back up at her. Babies that young weren't supposed to be able to smile, were they? Shaking her head, she removed her hand from their heads and used it to shake a reprimanding finger at them.  
  
"And don't you forget it." 


End file.
